If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Totem Gains New Features For GNOME 3.0

05-04-2010, 10:40 AM

Phoronix: Totem Gains New Features For GNOME 3.0

The first development milestone for GNOME 3.0 is expected to be reached tomorrow with the release of the unstable GNOME 2.31.1 package set. While Zeitgeist, the GNOME Shell, and Mutter are among the most talked about changes for the GNOME 3.0 desktop, many mature packages are receiving new features and work too. GNOME's Movie Player, Totem, is one of these packages receiving some attention...

Great news, how about getting rid of Totem's amateurish GUI (which many have the guts to call "simple")?
There are enough apps in Gnome with an amateurish look and feel but Totem beats them all hands down (with the usual excuse of "simplicity").

Comment

Great news, how about getting rid of Totem's amateurish GUI (which many have the guts to call "simple")?
There are enough apps in Gnome with an amateurish look and feel but Totem beats them all hands down (with the usual excuse of "simplicity").

Well, a simpe "rm /usr/share/totem/*.ui", and the amateurish GUI is gone.

Totem provides me with everything I need. When I double click on a file it starts playing. I can pause, I can scrub through the video. The playlist allows me to queue up files. What more could I want?

Well, there is one thing, but nothing fundamental. What I would like to see is a way to change the delay of the audio, so I can fix files that are out of sync. I'd write a python plugin, but the totem object doesn't expose the proper hooks. I'll report this as a feature request some day.

Comment

Totem provides me with everything I need. When I double click on a file it starts playing. I can pause, I can scrub through the video. The playlist allows me to queue up files. What more could I want?

That's somewhat a fundamental features of a player. If those are to be the selling point of totem and if it cannot do anything beside that then it is laughable ...

Well, there is one thing, but nothing fundamental. What I would like to see is a way to change the delay of the audio, so I can fix files that are out of sync.

You just named one of the things yourself (BTW this is a must and both VLC and Smplayer have this) I could name several other key features like ASS/SSA support, but I don't want to waste my time and check what current Totem has and what it has not. I know what it didn't have in a brief moment I've tried it, some time ago. I highly doubt the current totem got any better. Considering the GNOME mentality it really is enough for a player to just play files pause and maybe have a fullscreen mode ...

Comment

Having a native player for each and every desktop environment once was a novel idea, but it's rather pointless in 2010. I gave up on totem a while back because it was lacking more things than I care to remember.

Personally, I use gnome-mplayer.

Comment

It is almost ideal for the majority of users. Very simple interface, and not cluttered like vlc, or opens with 2 separate windows like mplayer. Out-of-the-box it is pretty good if you include the various gstreamer packages that allow you to play non-free formats.
My problems with it is that they need to push the accelerated bits to free gstreamer, and, as has already been mentioned, some synchronization functionality. There are probably many other things that I would like it to have ideally, but if I need those I'll use another player, or some other tool.

For those that don't like Gnome: we get it. Is it necessary to reply to every Gnomish thread stating that over and over again?